Thursday, 14 July 2011

An honest author

As part of the Routledge series on the Foundations of the Market Economy I wrote a book entitled Capital in Disequilibrium which was published in 1999. It is still available, but it is very expensive ($200) — certainly not worth that price! (Emphasis added.)

But the good news is,

Routledge recently released their copyright to me exclusively and I have just got through revising the book for a second edition to be published very soon by the Mises Institute. I had hoped to have some copies available at the upcoming AOM meetings in San Antonio, but this seems very unlikely now. Still, it will be easily available on their website and an open source version will also be there. The price of the book will be $15 I believe.

From $200 down to $15. Even accounting for lower production costs for the Mises version, a price that is less than 10% of the original means there was some serious price discrimination going on by Routledge. Is the library markets for books really so strong, and the general market so weak, that Routledge could solely aim for the library market and ignore the "general reader"? The general group seems to be the target audience for the Mises Institute.